Conversation with a participant
On Monday, May 19, 2025 I interviewed a young man (30) from Nicaragua who was selected to legally live and work in the United States as part of the CHNV parole program. He has asked to remain anonymous due to concerns about repercussions in the U.S. and in Nicaragua for sharing his views. I refer to him here as “Sergio” and his American sponsors as “Dave” and “Celeste,” to protect the individuals involved.
The interview took place as the United States Supreme Court was considering an injunction that held up the U.S. Government’s effort to terminate the CHNV program. The Court subsequently ruled that DHS could continue to terminate the participants’ legal residency in the U.S., even though the court case had yet to be resolved.
— Patrick Ryan
Timeline
- October 2022 – Biden Administration announces parole for Venezuelans
- January 6, 2023 – Biden Administration announces a similar parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who can gain sponsors. About 532,000 applicants are approved to live and work in the U.S. for two-year terms.
- January 20, 2025 – President Donald Trump signs an Executive Order calling for an end of immigrant parole programs.
- March 25, 2025 – DHS Federal Register notice formally terminating the CHNV program.
- April 14, 2025 – Preliminary injunction stayed parts of the March 25th Federal Register notice, issued by U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
- May 30, 2025 – Supreme Court of the U.S. issued an order lifting the preliminary injunction, permitting DHS to proceed with termination of CHNV paroles, while the Noem v. Svitlana Doe case heads to the Supreme Court.
Read my commentary on the termination of the CHNV program in my “There and Here” Substack. (thereandhere.substack.com)
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May 19, 2025
By telephone
[Patrick Ryan] Thank you for taking time to share your story about living and working in the United States under the CHNV patrol program.
[Sergio] I am a legal temporary citizen here in the United States from Nicaragua and I’ll be more than glad to share my perspective around everything that’s going on right now.
[Patrick] Tell me about your life in Nicaragua before you came to the States.
[Sergio] First of all Nicaragua was conquered by two crowns: England on the Atlantic and Spain on the Pacific. I was born in the Atlantic side of Nicaragua, in Bluefields. That’s why I’ve spoken Spanish and English since I was born.
As far as studies, I successfully finished up high school, but I didn’t get to finish at university. I reached the third year of a business administration degree then I started working because my family was depending on me for income. So, I started working when I was 16. Then with what I was earning as a barber I paid for my studies at the university. At the university I had contacts into the BPO industry. BPO stands for “business product outsourcing.” That’s customer service for U.S. companies that export or import from other countries.
[Patrick] How did your customer service efforts work out?
[Sergio] I got a contract with one of these companies and that’s when I started getting a decent income to be able to support my family when I was 18. Since then that’s what I was doing.
I focused on learning more about the US market, learning more about the US culture even though I had never been in the United States. Then I got married and my wife and I had a daughter who is now four years old.
[Patrick] How old are you now?
[Sergio] I’m 30 years old.
[Patrick] What motivated you to come to the United States under the CNHV parole program?
[Sergio] What motivated me to come over to United States was primarily for a better future for me and my family, to be able to build a house. We were renting a house and one of the things I didn’t like when I was a kid was the instability of moving from one house to another So, that’s something that I want to avoid for my wife and daughter. I want to give them stability, a decent house where they can live and feel that it’s our place. That’s what motivated me to come to United States.
By the way, I was offered multiple times to come to United States. It’s just that the ways I was offered were not legal. I didn’t like that. Ever since I was a young man, I’ve always tried to do things right, to do things legally. Doing things right that at the end of the day will not create any kind of repercussions.
[Patrick] Is your family here with you?
[Sergio] Right now we are both together in the United States. Our daughter is in Nicaragua.
[Patrick] Who are your American sponsors?
[Sergio] [Dave] and [Celeste] are our sponsors. I have known [Celeste] since I was five years old. She was born in the same city as I, Bluefields, Nicaragua. She is a great friend of my mom. She has been very supportive with us ever since we were kids so we have known [Celeste] for a long, long, long time. Eventually she came to United States and got married to [Dave].
About a year and a half ago and under the Biden administration, the United States gave hundreds of thousands of people the opportunity to come legally to America. It was through a program called CHNV which means, “Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela.” It’s benefit that’s given to countries that are basically in conflict or under dictatorships.
[Patrick] And the CHNV program required sponsors to prove their own income and pledge financial support for you and your wife. Is that the way it worked?
[Sergio] Yes, that’s correct. In 2021 we got married and we invited at both [Dave] and [Celeste] to be our witnesses. You must have two witnesses there for it to be legal. They were ours because we appreciated them so much.
I remember that day we started talking about the CHNV program and the possibility of coming to United States. I considered it was a great chance, a great opportunity to build that future that we have always dreamed about.
[Patrick] When did you apply and when were you approved? And when did you come to the United States?
[Sergio] The United States was an unknown world. I had been involved in the culture, and I knew a lot about the U.S., but as far as addresses, geography, methods of communication, methods of transportation, and such, it was an unfamiliar place. If you’ve never been in a country, you will not fully understand it.
Our first thoughts were okay, we could be able to get great opportunities in the United States from the program, but it still is an unknown country for us.
After we had a conversation with [Dave] and [Celeste], we started analyzing the CHNV process. There are different stages. First the sponsors have to fill out a form with their information. Their financial status to show they are able to sponsor the people they are requesting to come over.
It would take from 3 to 6 months for the government to verify the information and approve the request. Once the request was approved we were given 60 days to travel to United States.
Then it took two to three to get all the your documentation to be legal in the United States for work and such.
[Patrick] And when did you come to the United States?
[Sergio] I came to the States on May 7, 2024. The temporary legal status is granted for two years when you come under the CHNV.
Part of the transition from Nicaragua to the States was arranging for care of our daughter. My mom is the only person in the world that I would’ve let my daughter stay with. If my mom wasn’t there I think either I would’ve have stayed with our daughter or we might have had to make our daughter part of this journey with us here in United States. In our case, right we had to psychologically prepare our daughter for this change because she was only three years old when we left. It was about three months that we started the preparation for my daughter. She was staying with my mom at first it was only one day on the weekend. Then we moved up to two days. Then we moved up to leave our daughter for the whole week with my mom, and we would only spend the weekends with her. It was a part of the preparation for her to not have a high impact at the time we were ready to leave the country.
[Patrick] When do you plan to go back to Nicaragua?
[Sergio] We were planning to go to Nicaragua next year but all of our plans have changed.
[Patrick] How so?
[Sergio] Because of how things are going now, we may even be going earlier. As soon as we get our main priorities done, we might just leave.
[Patrick] Is it your own choice or are anticipating some further government action about the CHNV program?
[Ed. Note] This interview was conducted on May 19, 2025, 11 days before the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the injunction on DHS termination of all categorical parole programs including the CHNV.)
[Sergio] Honestly the main reason is my daughter. I really miss her. I can’t wait one more day to see her. The program as originally created also was to keep families together. That has changed. Our plan for after we came to the United States was to get my mom and my daughter to come over. My mom is the only one who’s got legal permission to travel with my daughter.
Our intentions were to come, get settled, get established here in the U.S., me and my wife with our sponsors. Then we were going to bring them over. Bringing our daughter and my mom over involved expenses, right, so we wanted to have things set up first.
[Patrick] Why didn’t they come?
[Sergio] The changes started happening and when we requested them to join us they got denied by the current Donald Trump administration.
[Patrick] The CHNV program is, as we discussed, a two-year program. It was terminated by DHS in March after Trump signed an executive order on inaugural day calling for it to end.
How do you view the situation where you were granted temporary status in the United States for two-years and then short of even one-year the Trump administration changed the rules?
[Sergio] It was scary. He was very intimidating. It was sad. I felt confused. It was terrible. I’m coming from a country where there is a dictatorship and one of the main things that is happening in my country is that everybody is silenced. My perspective of the United States was that it was the opposite of that. The perspective I’ve always had of the United States is this is a free country where the law is first and if you do things right, then the country will do right to you.
When Donald Trump signed the executive order to just cut down what was legally granted to us, that was one of the worst days in my life. I would say I was very sad. I was very depressed because my family is on my shoulders.
I had to stay strong, of course, but in my inside, I was destroyed at that moment. My feelings have changed a little bit now. But we were sent a notification, a warning saying that we should leave the country in two weeks.
We receive notifications through our immigration online account. We were sent a notification that was very intimidating. After we’re done with this interview, I can go ahead and share the actual documentation so you can read it.
It was a pure version of intimidation that you can read and for somebody not from here it’s very traumatic, very traumatic. It was like at the beginning of April. They were just giving us two weeks to leave the country.
[Patrick] Do you have other friends or acquaintances who are here under the same program?
[Sergio]
Yes, I have a few friends that are here and they’re the same program.
[Patrick] Do you know what their reactions have been to the premature termination of the program?
[Sergio] I would say if there was one thing in common among, not just my friends, but for the 500,000 people that are under this program, it was intimidation. We all felt very intimidated, very confused. Those are the two best words that I would say. Also scary. Those are the feelings, the emotions that came in regardless of whatever they do in their life. I think that is one of the minimum common factors that that everybody went through as far as my understanding goes, yeah.
[Patrick] So, you received a warning to leave within two weeks, and you decided to not follow that or was there a change in the communication?
[Sergio] I was willing to leave. I was. I was going to leave because again, I am the type of guy who will always try to do the right thing. So, I’m not going to put my wife, the woman that I love, or my family, the family that I love, in a situation where they have to be worried that we’re going to get caught by immigration and put in jail or even worse. You know I won’t do that.
So, for me personally I was thinking of leaving. I already was ready for the worst thing that could happen. Yeah, I was ready to leave.
[Patrick] So the DHS order was March 25th and then a U.S. District Court in Massachusetts issued an injunction to stay the order until a case could be heard by the court system. That was April 14th. That injunction is being appealed by the government to the Supreme Court. [The Court stayed the injunction, permitting the DHS to proceed with the CHNV program termination. How closely are you following that case?
[Sergio] Yes. I know where are standing right now. What I can say is that at this particular point I feel that there are thousands of people fighting for us. That’s what the majority of the CHNV people feel. When Trump signed the executive order we all felt that we were left alone. But my friend, [Dave] who is a US citizen, born and raised here in the United States, he said don’t feel alone.
You know still I was shocked. I was just listening to what he was saying, but I was shocked in the inside. But now, today, May 19th, I can say that I don’t feel alone. I feel backed up.
[Patrick] Separate from the CHNV program termination, as you know, there have been ICE sweeps and detentions around the country and most recently in Nashville. They’ve gained significant attention in the media and among officials, and there have been demonstrations.
What was your reaction when you heard that people were being pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, especially in the Nolensville Pike area, and that ICE was detaining people?
[Sergio] The perspective that I have now with this situation is that the margin of error is now zero and let me tell you why. Right now, the police activity has increased everywhere.
For me, the way I feel is that all of these police entities and patrols and immigration officers are chasing people. It’s not like how it was when I first came to the United States. You just got to follow the rules. Now you have zero margin of error. You can’t make a mistake whatsoever.
I feel like freedom has been reduced. You can be out, let’s say sitting in a field just spending some nice time with your loved ones and then you can get caught up in the middle of something that you were not expecting.
So those are the two things that I honestly feel that have changed with this situation.
The freedom of enjoying the beauties of this country have been reduced. You have got to be very careful. You have to plan very well. You have to be very prepared to go out and have some recreational time. Because you can get caught up in the middle of something that where you may have not been the main target, but because you were there in the wrong moment at the wrong time, then that can also hurt you.
[Patrick] So, you’re worried that ICE might detain you despite the fact that you have the legal status.
[Sergio] Yeah, yes
[Patrick] And do you carry your documentation with you?
[Sergio] Oh yeah. Not only that but again, honestly right now my wife and I only go from house to work and from our work, our jobs, to the house. That’s it.
We stay in communication with our sponsors. We are in their house. We live with them. When we leave the house we communicate with them. When we get to our jobs and on the way way back home. Yeah, and always carrying our documentation Always making sure that we follow all the traffic rules so we don’t get pulled over. We even avoid going to places where, let’s say for example, where our Latino community goes, we avoid.
We don’t even want to go out. Unless it’s safely with our sponsors. You know with our U.S. born, North American dad.
We don’t have the freedom to come and go wherever we want to go even though we are legal in this country. Yes.
[Patrick] So you would say the ICE crack down has had a chilling effect on Latinos, despite their status being legal or not.
[Sergio] Yes.
[Patrick] Tell me about your work.
[Sergio] My wife and I work in the logistics industry. We distribute. We work. We are part of the logistics teams of three of the major brands in the United States. And when I say major it is because everybody uses the products that we process every day.
Yeah, so that’s what we do. We work in the warehouses that are located up in Lebanon and I have a second job. That’s also in the logistic industry, a massive nationwide and international company that you would recognize when you heard it.
[Patrick] How many hours a week would you say you work?
[Sergio] I’m currently working 80 hours a week. My wife is working let’s say anywhere from 55 to 60 hours a week.
[Patrick] That’s more than enough to call you and your wife, “hard working.”
What would you tell people like you who are here legally but may have come to fear the immigration pushback.
[Sergio] I would say to them stay mentally strong at this moment. Always have faith in the laws of this country. There are people fighting for us to make sure that our rights are not broken and also that not all Americans are the same. There are good Americans that know we are here for a reason.
[Patrick] What would you tell people in the United States who don’t understand or may have little information about the situation you’re in? What would you tell him about the fear of the immigration round ups and the pushback and people saying awful things about immigrants?
[Sergio] What I would say is educate yourself. Make sure you understand the legal cases, processes and situations that are taking place at this moment because there are a lot of changes.
To Americans I would say we want to help you. We are here to help build up your country. One thing I’ve noticed is we fill some of the job positions that will make Americans go to the next level of operations as well.
I’ve seen a lot of Americans getting promoted because let’s say Latinos came and took their place in a job. That’s like the basic rules in a company.
We are here to work.
[Patrick] What should Americans know about you, your family and others on a people to people basis that they may not understand, where they may act on stereotypes?
[Sergio] I would tell them that there are awful things going on in the places we come from. So, when we come to the United States it turns out it’s a difficult decision to make to come. We don’t leave our countries because we want to.
And destiny took us to such a beautiful country like the United States, that’s the first thing I would tell Americans.
It’s not like we just wanted to leave. It’s because awful things are happening. Our countries that under dictatorships. Countries that are in war, people dying, friends dying, family dying. So, in the first place, let’s be conscious that the reason why we are here in the United States, it’s not because we wanted to leave our countries. We were forced to.
Not everybody is the same. The majority of the people who come from let’s say Latino countries or even countries from all over the world, the majority of the people are here to work. To work right.
I think that we have gone through a lot. On top of that there has been racism that is hurtful to our humanity. There are Americans who will be racist toward us. At the end of the day one thing that they don’t seem to like, is to think we are all humans
We should treat humanity with respect and dignity.
[Patrick] That’s a good a good note to end on. Is there anything that we didn’t discuss that you want to say?
[Sergio] That’s about it actually. At this point I think I feel very grateful with the opportunity that the country has given me. I feel like I gave back.
In appreciation of what was granted to me and the two years that I was granted to be here legally I have given back a lot.
I have contributed in activities at the community centers of my city. Even though I work 80 hours a week right now I go ahead and do activities.
I’m a singer. I’m a national singer in my country so I go and share my talent for free with the kids, with the families that go to the recreational area so they can have fun and I do it for free.
I want to give back in return for what was given to me. I also pick up trash by the road by the lake. I realized that surrounding the shores were so dirty that I started doing activities with some of my friends to go out and clean the lake.
That’s no longer possible.
I will continue doing some things even though I am now limited in a significant way. I’m significantly limited on the things that I want to do here for the country. But the best thing I will continue doing is loving and respecting the flag and respecting Americans’ opinions and to keep doing the right thing.
[Patrick] Thank you for sharing your story.